Rafaela rubbed the salt between her fingers, pelting the corn lightly, and gave it to Sol whose small hands encircled the thick ear eagerly. He sunk his baby teeth into the soft sweet kernels at one end and wandered after his mother. She slung a canvas bag with Sol’s bottle in it over her shoulder and called after the boy, “This way, Sol. We’re going to see Doña Maria.”
Together they skirted Rodriguez’s unfinished wall following its pregnant bulge. Strangely the curve in its features seemed even more accentuated than this morning when she and Rodriguez had stood solemnly before it, speechless. Both watched a long thin snake wend its way along the wall, its fine head curiously rising and dipping, searching for a passage. Rodriguez did not move to kill the snake as he might have because, she thought, the snake’s path skirting the wall seemed oddly straight. If only the snake could define the nature of a straight line . . . She did not have the heart to ask Rodriguez to tear the wall down, and she hoped that Gabriel would not expect such perfection either. But she would call and ask. Sol tugged at her fingers, and they continued down the path toward Doña Maria’s.
She had been thinking about calling Bobby, practicing her conversation. She had needed to go home to find out what that felt like; it had been too many years . . . that would be her excuse. He should see Sol, so tan and healthy these days. Maybe they could find a way to go to Singapore. At least he could go home to see his family. It might help. She was going to suggest it.
A highly polished black Jaguar was parked conspicuously in the shade in front of Doña Maria’s porch. Rafaela eyed the car warily and paused, absently reading the gold numbers across its back, XJS 12, wondering whether it might be best to leave, but Sol was already running up the steps, and Doña Maria seemed to be waiting for them at the door. Rafaela sighed. She had better look in on the woman. Perhaps the Jaguar belonged to a stranger.
“You have come at a good time.” Doña Maria clapped her chubby hands together. “You can meet my son Hernando. I suppose you thought he didn’t exist. I’m always talking about him, but he never visits. But what’s a mother to do? He’s so busy.”
Rafaela could hear a man’s voice yelling.
Doña Maria waved in that direction. “On the phone. He’s been on the phone since he arrived last night. Always business. Such a headache. He hasn’t touched his coffee. Come on. Sit down. Sweet bread for Sol?”
Sol was still clinging to his corn. Pieces of the yellow kernels stuck to his cheeks and nose. Rafaela wiped them away and tried to take the corn from Sol’s hands. Sol pulled away. The corn was precious to him.
“Is it that good?” Doña Maria laughed. “We have an entire field of it. You can have as much corn as you want. Shall we take a look?”
Rafaela nodded but glanced back in the direction of the phone. Doña Maria’s son was still yelling. Something about a shipment of oranges. “I want to know every detail, every stop, every person who had anything to do with it from the time it got to Honduras!” He paused. “Those Brazilians are sons of bitches, but they’re not so stupid!”
“I’m sorry,” apologized Doña Maria. “Of course you want to use the phone.”
“I can come back another time,” Rafaela protested.
“Did you see the satellite dish? He came to check it out.” She pointed in the direction of the television. “For me, such a blessing, a little television now and then. Don’t you miss it?”
Rafaela hadn’t seen television for weeks now. She thought about Bobby and his Sony television, how he had chosen it so carefully, how much he wanted to impress her with this gift. Everything was a gift to her and Sol: all those amazing things he loved to buy. She had scorned his materialism, but it was his way of showing his love, of trying to delight her with the nice things that other Americans had. That is what he wanted to tell her. No, she didn’t miss television, but she missed Bobby.
“Sons of bitches!” Hernando yelled.
Doña Maria rolled her eyes. “Come.” She pushed Sol out the door. “Let’s get some corn. Maybe when we get back, he’ll be off the phone.”
“What is your son’s business?” Rafaela wanted to know.
“Oh, he dabbles in this and that. I don’t really know. Export. Import. I never know his business. This time it’s oranges from Brazil. Some problem with them. Poor Hernando. It’s such a headache.” She shook her head. They walked on. Doña Maria’s property extended over several acres. “See?” she pointed for Sol. “Corn. Rows and rows.” The stalks towered above their heads, thick with ears of corn, silk drying in brown curls.
“What will you do with so much corn?”
“Eat it, of course. As much as you want. The rest, Lupe will take to market for cash.” Rafaela knew Lupe did everything on Doña Maria’s place. Lupe cleaned, cooked, gardened, planted, and harvested. She fed the chickens, collected eggs, fattened the pigs, and slaughtered them when the time came. Rafaela thought about her argument with Bobby, about how she and Bobby did all the work without benefits, about exploitation. Now she had crossed the border and forgotten her anger. Lupe did all the work. Someone was always at the bottom. As long as she was not, did it matter?
“How stupid of me,” Doña Maria pouted, “I’ve forgotten the basket. And it was right there at the kitchen door.”
“I’ll go back,” offered Rafaela. “Besides,” she pointed at the canvas bag, “if you don’t mind, I’d like to put Sol’s bottle in the refrigerator.” Rafaela hurried toward the house which seemed quite near, but looking back, Sol and Doña Maria seemed suddenly quite far. It was perplexing to see the way in which the corn seemed to tower around them and swallow them up. As she stepped into the kitchen, she expected to hear Hernando’s loud voice still over the phone, but now there were two voices, speaking in even tones, pulsing heavily through the thick air.
“How many months?”
“This one’s not a baby. Two. Two and a half years.”
“What do they need?”
“Kidney.”
“One?”
“Yes.”
“Blood type?”
“It’s all there as usual.”
“How desperate are they?”
“Very.”
“Was the price suggested?”
“Yes. They agreed.”
“We’ll see what we can do.”
“Tell them to be careful. Not just any starving two-year-old.”
“They’re not getting the stomach. They’re getting a kidney.”
“The child shouldn’t be yellow, jaundiced.”
“Kidneys are cheaper. The child can live on just one. No?”
“It’s the same work.”
“I’ll call in a few days.”
“The doctor wants to go on vacation. We expect delivery Friday.”
“And today, what did you bring me?”
“A heart. It’s hard to believe they’re so small. The size of a golf ball.” The voice was approaching the kitchen.
Instinctively, Rafaela slipped outside the door and listened to the footsteps, the sound of the refrigerator door, and the soft clunk of plastic on the cold shelf. When the kitchen seemed empty again, she slipped in and opened the refrigerator door, foolishly gripping Sol’s bottle as an excuse. Cold air bathing her hot skin, she seized the handle of what she recognized to be a small hard plastic cooler. It was the sort she used to carry around back home to keep Sol’s bottles of milk chilled. It wasn’t very big at all. With the ice packed in, she could, at most, get a small bottle and a fruit in it. Perhaps because it seemed so familiar reminded her of her attachment to Sol—she was able to snatch that blue and white container nestled between leftover cake and a piece of cheese as if it were her own and stuff it into the canvas bag.
Export. Import. It was not just any conversation spoken in a bubble of intrigue. It did not make any sense, but it made Rafaela’s heart race. Suddenly she realized her recklessness. From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Doña Maria’s son Hernando, a fearful meeting of faces in reflective glass. Who was this man whose yell and whose whisper both worked a terrible knot at a tender place in her womb? Not just any starving two-year-old. What could it mean? Sol. Sol was not starving. He was not just any two-year-old.
Rafaela stumbled from the kitchen, racing toward the field of corn with her new possession feeling suddenly very heavy, but the more she ran, the farther it seemed to be. She could see the distant figures of Doña Maria and Sol with his salted cob wandering in and out of the corn, wandering as if in some timeless space, at every moment farther and farther. Her heaving breath pummeled in her ears. How long would it take to run such a distance? Breathless, she stretched her arms reaching toward Sol. To everything there seemed to be an eerie liquid elasticity. How far must she race? How far must she reach to touch her Sol?